Category: Law

I don’t talk about it very often, but there are some real consequences to even the existence of spam. All the way back in 2004, the FTC mentioned it as a driver in address churn[1] . Of course, wanted messages get lost. Finally, we can blame the mere existence of spam for the existence of…Read More

People will sometimes ask me why I hate the Lead Generation (lead gen) and Payday Loan industries. Ultimately, it’s because they have such deep problems that I don’t think that any self-respecting ESP should take them on as a client. This morning, I saw a press release outlining a settlement between a lead gen operation and…Read More

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission announced today that they have issued their first penalty against someone for sending email in violation of Canada’s anti-spam law. The penalty is substantial (C$1.1 million, or roughly US$881,700 at today’s exchange rate), but isn’t anywhere near the C$40 million potential maximum penality. Still, the size of the penalty is…Read More

The Lompoc Record is reporting that Jeffery Kilbride has escaped from the minimum security federal lockup. Kilbride was convicted in 2007 of offenses primarily related to the CAN-SPAM Act. Among the things that were apparently included was an allegation that Kilbride and his partner had impaired the ability to track them down by using false…Read More

In looking at the new regulatory framework for CASL which was just released late on Tuesday of last week by Industry Canada, I noticed a this bit: 3. Section 6 of the Act does not apply to a commercial electronic message… (f) if the person who sends the message or causes or permits it to be…Read More

Lots of folks have been talking recently about a September German Federal Court ruling[1] that “emails sent using a ‘send to a friend’ function are to be considered spam, unless the recipient had given prior express consent.” This is a fairly significant development in law. As a general rule, people advise that using a “Forward…Read More

I unsubscribed from a mailing list recently. When I did, I was confronted with the following message: We’re sorry to see you go. You should be aware that it could take up to ten business days to completely remove your address from our lists. That’s a pretty standard disclaimer that complies with the time limits…Read More

Lots of time and space has been dedicated to an examination of Canada’s new anti-spam law. And we have been watching it too. For a general overview of the law, I would suggest reading Al Iverson’s ExactTarget blog post about it. Today, though, let us consider a burning question in the eyes of marketers: “Does…Read More

One of the first things I learned when I became a legal assistant is that there are rarely any pat answers. A blanket assertion is almost always wrong. (Did you see the attorney-like weasel wording there?) There has been an interesting discussion on Twitter today regarding a February Techcrunch post (and wow is a half…Read More

An interesting question came across my desk this morning. Here’s the request from someone we’ll call “Joe”: I need some help understanding CAN-SPAM requirements. I represent a membership organization. From time to time, we send marketing message to our members and, of course, some of the unsubscribe from those messages. Now we are getting to…Read More